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1. B. Venkateswar Rao et al Int. Journal of Engineering Research and Applications
ISSN : 2248-9622, Vol. 4, Issue 1( Version 1), January 2014, pp.09-14
RESEARCH ARTICLE
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OPEN ACCESS
Spatial and Temporal Determination of the Air Quality at Major
Transportation Regions of the Hyderabad Metropolitan City:
India.
B. Venkateswar Raoa, E. Ramjeeb, V. Venkateswara Reddyc
a
Centre for Environment, IST, JNTUH, India-500085.
Mechanical Department, CEH, JNTUH, India-500085.
c
Civil Engineering Department, CEH, JNTUH, India-500085.
b
Abstract
At present much attention is given to find the evidence linking urban air pollution to acute and chronic illnesses
amongst all groups’ people. Therefore, monitoring of ambient concentrations of various air pollutants as well as
quantification of the pollutant inhaled becomes quite important, specially in view of the fact that in many
countries, policy decisions for reducing pollutant concentrations are mainly taken on the basis of their health
impacts. Amounts of SO2, PM and NOx originating from the city-traffic are not less important than the
emissions from other sources such as residential heating systems and industrial activities. This paper reveals that
concentration for four pollutants namely sulfur dioxide, Nitrogen oxides, Total suspended particulate matter and
respirable suspended particular matter from January 2010 to April 2013. The three year average maximum
concentration of SO2, NOX, RSPM and TSPM are reported to be 5.4 μg/m3, 32.0 μg/m3, 127.4 μg/m3 and 318.6
μg/m3 at Panjagutta, Paradise, Balanagar and Panjagutta respectively.
KEYWORDS: Transportation, Air Quality, Particulate Matter, Wind Rose, Distribution.
I.
Introduction
Air pollution has been aggravated by
developments that typically occur as countries
become urbanized: growing cities, increasing traffic,
rapid economic development and higher levels of
energy consumption. Most of the cities worldwide
have witnessed severe air quality problems mainly
due to the vehicles. Urbanization has resulted in high
levels of ground level deterioration of air quality.
The investigation of air pollution in mega cities by
Mage et al. (1996) 7, 11 showed that the major
problem affecting these cities is their high levels of
total suspended particles (TSP). Where, some of the
worst forms of air pollutions are found in Indian
cities12.
Air pollutants that are inhaled affect human
health severely by way of damaging the lungs and
respiratory system. Oxides of sulfur can oxidize and
form sulfuric acid, thereby leading to the damage of
lungs and various lung disorders such as wheezing
and shortness of breath. Oxides of nitrogen, on the
other hand, make children susceptible to respiratory
diseases especially in winter season. The main
chemical component of SPM that is of major
concern is lead, others being nickel, arsenic and
those present in diesel exhaust 4.The particle size is
very important both in terms of deeper penetration
into the lungs and fine particles are carriers of toxic
air pollutants including heavy metals and organic
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compounds. Exposure to particulate matter can cause
adverse health effects including metal toxicity 11, 4.
Many air pollutants have been identified as being
closely related to transportation. This is a non
separable part of any society. It exhibits a very close
relation to the style of life, the range and location of
activities and the goods and services which will be
available
for
consumption.
Advances
in
transportation has made possible changes in the way
of living and the way in which societies are
organized and therefore have a great inuence in the
development of civilizations. The negative effects of
transportation are more dominating than its useful
aspects as far as transportation is concerned 5, 10.
They have been categorized as numerous
environmental pollution factor. All transport modes
consume energy and the most common source of
energy is from the burning of fossil fuels like coal,
petrol, diesel, etc. The combustion of the fuel
releases several contaminants into the atmosphere,
including carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, oxides of
nitrogen, and other particulate matter 3, 8. The higher
the level of concentration of transport activities, the
higher their environmental impacts are being felt by
the local community. This is particularly the case for
large transport terminals, such as industrial estates,
rail yards and airports. A salient example is
Hyderabad, one of the most important marketing
containers India. The industrial containers are
centrally located with an acute concentration of large
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2. B. Venkateswar Rao et al Int. Journal of Engineering Research and Applications
ISSN : 2248-9622, Vol. 4, Issue 1( Version 1), January 2014, pp.09-14
shipments and tens of thousands of truck movements
per day. Many air pollutants have been identified as
being closely related to transportation 5, 7.
Emitted amounts of SO2, PM and NOx
originating from the city-traffic are not less
important than the emissions from other sources such
as residential heating systems and industrial
activities. As in the most of the developing countries,
the road traffic in Hyderabad appears to be the most
important source group contributing to air pollution
especially in city centre’s. In these central locations
large traffic volumes and congestion commonly
result in significant degradation of the air quality as a
function of the rate of increase in population and
urbanization 10.
The long term production of this air
pollutant causes the deterioration of the surrounding
environments due to dispersion under different
climatic conditions, such as temperature, relative
humidity, wind speed and wind direction and other
pollutant concentrations. This dispersion is carried
by averaging period with sufficient information is
available on emissions and meteorology of the
pollutants. This borrows functionality from ESRI's
ArcGIS to produce high resolution maps of air
pollution which can be directly used in GIS-based
exposure assessment 6, 12. Wind speed and wind
direction are the mainly dominating factors for air
pollutant dispersion.
Study area:
India is a tropical country. There are around
100 metropolitan cities in India, out of which
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Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai,
Hyderabad, Ahmadabad and Pune are the 8 cities
that qualify as the top metro cities in country.
Hyderabad is located at latitude of 17° 22′ 42″ North
and longitude 78° 28′ 30″ East. It is the capital city
of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
Occupying 650 square kilometers (250 sq mi) on the
banks of the Musi River, it is also the largest city in
the state. As of 2011, the population of the city was
6.8 million with a metropolitan population of 7.75
million, making it India's fourth most populous
city and sixth most populous urban agglomeration.
Coming to transportation of metropolitan is well
connected to many other locations in India, such
as Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Nagpur,
Chennai, Pune, Vishakhapatnam and Vijayawada.
Three of the National Highways (NH) pass through
the city NH-7, NH-9 and NH-202, Five state
highways SH-1, SH-2, SH-4, SH-5 and SH-6 begins.
Where, the roads occupy 10% of the total city area.
II.
Description of sampling sites
Twenty one study areas were selected for
present study. They are the places of heavy traffic
highway roads, residential areas, commercials areas,
industrial estates and sensitive zones. Figure 1 shows
the location of the monitoring sites of SO2, NOX,
TSPM, RSPM and Relative Meteorology.
Geographical location of the sampling sites is
measured using Global Positioning System (GPS)
instrument.
Figure 1 Bird Eye view of the Monitoring Sites
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3. B. Venkateswar Rao et al Int. Journal of Engineering Research and Applications
ISSN : 2248-9622, Vol. 4, Issue 1( Version 1), January 2014, pp.09-14
1.APPA, 2.Rajendra nagar, 3.MGBS, 4.Bala nagar,
5.Uppal,
6.Jubilee Hills, 7.Chikadapally,
8.Jeedimetla,
9.Langerhouse,
10.Madhapur,
11.Shameerpet,
12.Kukatpally,
13.Shinicpuri,
14.HCU, 15.Nacharam, 16.Abids, 17.Panjagutta,
18.Paradise, 19. Charminar, 20.Zoo park, 21.KBR
park.
Heavy traffic highway roads: Uppal, MGBS,
Kukatpally, Panjagutta, Abids, Paradise Residential
areas: APPA, Jubilee Hills, Chikkadapally,
Madhapur, Shameerpet, Sainikpuri, Rajendranagar
Commercials areas: Langar House, Uni.of Hyd,
Nacharam, Charminar, Jubilee Hills Industrial
estate: Balanagar, Jeedimetla, Sensitive zones: KBR
park, Zoo park
III.
Methodology
Air samples were collected from
residential, industrial and commercial zones for ten
days in a month at each site. Suspended Particulate
Matter (SPM) are monitored on an 8-hourly basis
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for 24 hr by collecting the particulates on 20.3cm X
25.4cm glass fiber filter (Whattman GF/A) using
ENVIROTECH-APM 460 NL sampler. The flow
rate is maintained at 1.2 l cu.m/min. Glass fibre
filters are equilibrated in desiccators containing
silica gel for 24 h before and after sample collection
and weighed on a pre-calibrated AFCOSET balance
(ER182A). NOx and SO2 are monitored on a 4hourly basis for 24 hr as per the National Ambient
Air Quality Standards (NAAQS, 1998) using
Improved West and Gaeke method for SO2 and
Modified Jacob and Hochheiser method for NO2.
The double beam Shimadzu UV 2450 UV-Visible
Spectrophotometer is used for spectro-photo metric
applications. The samples were collected at the rate
of 5 l min-1 during the entire 24 hrs of sampling
period. Meteorological data is collected from Indian
meteorological department, Hyderabad. The
complete observations were compared with CPCB
standards.
IV.
Results and Discussion
Winter wind rose 1-1-2012 to 29-2-2012
Figure 2 wind rose pattern of the study area
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4. B. Venkateswar Rao et al Int. Journal of Engineering Research and Applications
ISSN : 2248-9622, Vol. 4, Issue 1( Version 1), January 2014, pp.09-14
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Figure 3 Distribution of the pollutants to surrounding areas
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5. B. Venkateswar Rao et al Int. Journal of Engineering Research and Applications
ISSN : 2248-9622, Vol. 4, Issue 1( Version 1), January 2014, pp.09-14
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Figure 4 Concentration of the SO2, NOx, TSPM and RSPM at all the location
The yearly average characterization of 21
selected monitoring sites is represented in the Figure
4 in terms of SO2, NOx TSPM and RSPM.
Figure 4 represents, the year average of
SO2 concentrations are decreased at all the
monitoring places except chikkadapally and
paradise. in the years of 2010, 2011, 2012 the year
average concentration ranged from 4.2 to 5.4 μg/m3,
4.1 to 4.84 μg/m3 and 4.2to 4.94 μg/m3
respectively. Three years minimum and maximum
of the average concentration is 4.2 and 5.4 μg/m3.
Anthropogenic emissions of NOx lead to majority of
all nitrogen inputs to the environment. During the
years of 2010 to 2012, the year averages of NOX
concentration is observed to be from 14 to 32 μg/m3,
14.1 to 31.7 μg/m3 and 13.2 to 31.9 μg/m3
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respectively. Three years minimum and maximum
of the average concentration is 14.6 and 31 μg/m3.
In case of RSPM the concentrations are
ranged from 38.3to 108.8 μg/m3, 35.1 to 108.1
μg/m3 and 39.2 to 127.4μg/m3 for the years of 2010,
2011 and 2012 respectively. Three years minimum
and maximum of the average concentration is 35.1
and 127.4 μg/m3.
During the years of 2010 to 2012, the year
averages of TSPM concentration is observed to be
from 112.1 to 318.6 μg/m3, 101.5 to 293.2μg/m3
and 106.6 to 297.7 μg/m3 respectively. Three years
minimum and maximum of the average
concentration is 101.5 and 318.6 μg/m3.
Concentrations of RSPM and TSPM are
above than the limits. RSPM is ranged up to 2.12
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6. B. Venkateswar Rao et al Int. Journal of Engineering Research and Applications
ISSN : 2248-9622, Vol. 4, Issue 1( Version 1), January 2014, pp.09-14
times and TSPM is ranged from 1.12 to 3.18 times
to the prescribed limits 2-10.
The RSPM
concentrations are lower than the concentrations of
TSPM, it is quit natural but those concentrations are
above than the CPCB prescribed limits. It is caused
due the transportation of the heavy duty trucks and
local transportation sectors 9. The TSPM levels in
Hyderabad urban locations are higher than levels in
metro cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and comparable
with levels in Delhi. Although the objective of this
work is not to find the reasons as to why the levels
are high in Hyderabad, it obviously reflects on large
emissions in Hyderabad if one considers the
meteorological conditions and major national
highway emissions. The high levels of RSPM and
TSPM in Hyderabad suggest that there is a definite
need to measure and control.
According to wind rose diagram it is
observed that in the monsoon and post monsoon
sessions the north is the most predominant direction
(figure 2), during summer and winter seasons the
south is the most predominant direction. During all
seasons the maximum wind speed is observed to be
12m/sec, where as the calm air % during monsoon,
post-monsoon, winter and summer are observed to
be 15.64%, 32, 93%, 29.10% and 10.60%.
The Three Year Average Maximum is
represented in the figure 3, where the paradise and
Panjagutta are having maximum concentrations of
SO2 and NOx, followed by Abids, Balanagar and
Jeedimetla. It is mainly due to the passage of
vehicles only (k).
V.
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
Conclusions
SO2 and NOx are within prescribed limits
of CPCB Whereas RSPM and TSPM are alarming
pollution status in Hyderabad. Maximum calm air
conditions are observed during post monsoon
seasons. North is the most predominant wind
direction in monsoon, post monsoon seasons, where
as south is during winter and summer seasons. Study
concludes that the heavy traffic zones are
aggregated with remarkable pollutant levels. The
further monitoring of the pollution levels along with
causing agent consideration (Transportation) is
needed to control the pollution levels in and around
the Hyderabad metropolitan.
[10]
[11]
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